


Gold

by duesternis



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Autistic George Hodgson, Dry Orgasm, Emotional Sex, George's secret club, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Prostate Orgasm, Safe Sane and Consensual, School Reunion, Spanking, Voice Kink, and several named characters that are too unimportant for this to be tagged, and talks while he's at it, bisexual milf hunter dundy, disgustingly frankophil dundy, except for the over eager unsafe blow job but well, george hodgson fucks, side pairings, these tags are a mess sorry about that, this has bad rom-com vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:01:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28547541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duesternis/pseuds/duesternis
Summary: “See, I can show you the ropes around le petit Paris, mon cheri.”George laughed and warmly cupped Henry’s elbow in his hand, pressing quick kisses to his cheeks, like a true Parisian.Henry was left with a nose full of George’s perfume and the warm feeling of arousal pooling low in his belly.The man exuded a sickening amount of sex appeal.And by God, Henry was feeling it.
Relationships: Lt George Hodgson/Lt Henry T.D. Le Vesconte
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Gold

**Author's Note:**

> HONDY NATION RISE UP

The ball room was decorated with streamers in blue and green, the same colour scheme from their so-called prom night, fifteen years ago this year.  
Jeez.  
Fifteen years.  
Jas sighed next to Henry and tucked his perfectly curled hair behind his ears.

“I’m a bit sad they didn’t get the same venue again.”  
“Oh, Jas, please! That was a shithole fifteen years ago, just imagine the mould issues now.”  
“Still. You know I do love me some nostalgia.”  
“That’s apparent,” Henry quipped and playfully tugged on the corner of Jas’ graduation blazer. “I’m amazed you still fit into that thing, though.”  
“Me too, honestly. Yours didn’t fit anymore?”  
Henry shrugged and checked his phone. “I couldn’t find it,” he lied and swiped a grindr-notif off his screen.

Jas made a noncommital noise, pressed a kiss to the corner of Henry’s eye and then floated deeper into the room, calling names out that Henry hadn’t even thought about in years.  
“Edward Little! Look at you! Loving those piercings, congratulations on the wedding, the pictures were gorgeous,” called Jas and shook Little’s hand.  
Henry watched the man flush a deep crimson, the slender man behind him grinning like a cat that had indeed gotten the canary as well as the bowl of cream.  
They made a pretty pair.  
Little introduced his husband to Jas and Henry turned away, idling over to the bar.

“Mr Diggle, good to see you.”  
“Oh shut it. What do you want to drink?”  
“Just a beer, for now.”  
Diggle said something under his breath and handed Henry a cool bottle of dark ale.  
He cheersed the man and wandered back into the room.  
Music that Henry had last heard fifteen years ago played softly over the speakers and it made him feel like an obnoxious teenager again.  
Trying to impress himself and the world with little to no success.  
He sipped his beer and waved at the gaggle of women by the tables, not recognizing a single one of them.  
They giggled and waved back, some of them old beyond their years.

“Le Vesconte? Is that you?”  
Henry turned over his shoulder and found himself face to face with Graham Gore. Who looked exactly like he had the last time Henry had seen him and that had been maybe five years ago.  
Red-cheeked, happy, eyebrows simply to die for. Fit.  
“Gore!”  
Henry pulled the man into a half hug and then clinked his bottle to Gore’s glass.  
“What are you drinking?”  
“Juice,” laughed Gore, shrugging his broad shoulders, “I’m driving.”  
“Oh, carpool?”  
“Just JW, Goodsir and me, but yeah. Carpooling.” Gore shrugged again and Henry grinned around the mouth of his beer bottle.

It was a typical Gore-move to offer to drive and Henry was glad that some things seemingly never changed.  
“So, who’s here all in all? I’ve just arrived and I can’t recognize half these people.”  
Henry allowed Gore’s chuckle and then tried to actually connect the people Gore pointed to with the vague memories that Henry could recall.  
Most of them looked older than they were, faces sagging and hair thinning.  
A few had children with them, juggling them and their phones and drinks, reminiscing with their old cliques.

“It’s a bit sad, innit?”  
“What is?”, asked Henry, winking at Jas, who was leaned against a table, talking animatedly to Goodsir.  
“That everyone always just sits with the same people they always used to sit with.”  
“Hah, yes. But you tend to sit with the rowing team, too, don’t you?”

Gore grinned sheepishly and lifted his empty glass in a sad little toast. “Guilty as charged. I’ll hunt down something to drink, you go talk to someone you’ve not talked to yet.”  
Henry laughed and turned his bottle around in his hand, watching Gore be easy and happy in the crowd on his way to the bar. It made him jealous.  
Things like that had never come easy to him, but as a mask to hide behind.  
Be the class clown.  
Throw parties in his parents’ house.  
Make himself the popular one, Jas’ best friend.  
And Jas was always well-liked. Easy on the eye and honestly funny.

Henry, well.  
Already greying by sixth form, always a biscuit on hand and rich.  
Those were the things he had going for himself, and adult life had not been as kind to him as to Jas.  
Jas, with his amazing job and his gorgeous flat and his fulfilling sex life that also happened to be disgustingly romantic.  
Henry, with his boring office job, his over-expensive flat that was too streamlined to feel like home and his grindr flings.

The last time Henry had truly felt like himself had been the trip to Paris two years ago, Jas most of the time off somewhere with his man, and Henry holding the fort in one bistro after another.  
God, he was still good at wallowing.  
With a sigh he swallowed the dregs of his beer and whistled along to the horrible pop blaring from the speakers.

He wandered aimlessly around the room, shaking hands here and there, faintly surprised by how many people remembered him fondly, but he slowly found his footing, slipping back into the high school persona he had crafted over years.  
The graduation jacket had been too tight all around, but high school Dundy still fit like a glove.  
Time flew and two hours passed like nothing.

Henry excused himself to the washroom, when one ex-gymnast who’s name he had already forgotten again tried to rope him into a dance, the engagement ring shiny on her finger.  
In the washroom he splashed some water on his face, combed his hair and practiced the smile Jas affectionately called smarmy.  
In the hallway, before the cracked glass doors leading into the hall proper, two men stood in dripping raincoats, hoods still up.

“I told you we should have taken that exit before the McDonalds!” hissed the shorter one, brushing his hood back, hair dark and short.  
Henry had no idea who it was.  
“You were as hungry as I was, mon ami,” said the other man, voice supple and soft like Henry’s favourite cashmere scarf.  
“No! No, I wasn’t! And then you taking the wrong entry on the high way, making us go the wrong way!”  
“You didn’t notice either, so please, John, stop blaming me.” The voice opened the zipper of his raincoat and shrugged out of it, back turned to Henry.  
His blazer was a woodsy green, subtle blue plaid overlaid on it.  
Very handsome and the cut was divine.  
“Oh, come on, you said you didn’t need the GPS!”  
“C’est la vie, John,” said the voice, inflection perfect and Henry swallowed heavily.

It was so hard to find a man in Britain that spoke good French.  
Henry didn’t even mind a bit of an accent, it needn’t be perfect French.  
Good French was hard enough to find.

“Let’s get inside, I really need a drink.”  
“George! You’re driving!”, complained the short one – John, apparently, but there had been so many Johns Henry really had no way of telling which one this John was.  
If he even was from their year, and not just the date of the French-speaking wonder.  
“We’ll get a cab to the hotel, don’t be such a worrywart!”

And with that George, if Henry had heard correctly, threw the doors open the rest of the way and called a loud “Bonsoir!” into the hall.  
John cringed and followed with his head between his shoulders.  
Henry slipped in behind them, sticking close to rather dimly lit corners of the hall.

It was truly a spectacle to behold the visceral reactions that the entrance of the two rainsodden men called forth.  
It was a small chorus of whoops and cheers, some enthusiastic chants of old, cruel nicknames and a huge amount of loud, loud groans.  
Little flanked over a table, shouting a loud “Hodgson! Irving!” and then embraced the two men in a bear hug.

The names meant barely anything to Henry, but he thought faintly that they had both sang Choir, if he wasn’t mixing things up here.  
Henry chuckled, finding Jas in the spotlight by one of the larger tables, evidently interrupted in the middle of a tale, but amused by it.  
“George Hodgson and John Irving. What a pair, huh Dundy?”  
“He speaks very good French.”  
“Oh-ho!”  
Henry laughed and shoved Jas affectionately. “Not that kind of French. I overheard them as I came out of the loo.”  
Jas smiled and sipped his colourful cocktail through a straw, one arm slung around Henry’s hips.

“I heard from Little he’s in the music business now. Does scores for movies, or something like that.”  
“Cool.”  
“All over Europe.”  
“Jas.”  
“Dundy.”  
“What are you trying?”  
“Nothing,” said Jas, sickly-sweet, batting his lashes at Henry.  
“Leave off, I’m not looking to get some at the reunion. I’m not that sad.”  
Jas shrugged and sipped his cocktail again. Henry swiped a sip and wrinkled his nose.  
Tequila-based.  
“Your taste, my dear, is abyssmal.”  
“Well, dear sir, that is simply too much! Remove yourself from my presence at once!”

Henry laughed and Jas pressed a kiss to his cheek, before following a beckoning from Fairholme with a raise of his glass.  
Alone he turned to the bar, hunting down a cocktail for himself.

Standing between Little’s husband and a short, angry looking guy that Henry vaguely recalled as one of the people on the footsie team, maybe, he waited for his turn.  
Little’s husband, a man called Thomas, working as a concierge in a London hotel, was a pleasant enough man to converse with.  
And he knew Paris.  
Had opinions about bistros and cafés.  
“Are you sure,” asked Henry, “That you’re quite happy with your husband?”, and winked at him.

Thomas laughed and gave Henry’s arm a punch that was way harder than Henry would have expected.  
“I’ve never been happier, but thanks. Isn’t your boyfriend quite continental?”  
“Boyfriend? You must mean Jas! James Fitzjames?”  
Thomas nodded, miming the toss of Jas’ chestnut mane.

“We’re only friends! The closest of, sure, but friends. He’s in a commited relationship going on four years now.”  
“Ah,” said Thomas and ordered his drink, evidently embarrassed.  
There went that conversation.

Diggle had gotten company from Wall behind the bar, the two bumping elbows constantly.  
Henry checked his phone and swiped two more grindr-notifs away.  
“Pardon me,” said a silken voice very close to Henry’s ear and he dropped his phone.

In a flash of woodsy green the man bend over and picked Henry’s phone up, handing it to him with a little smile.  
“You dropped this.”  
Henry laughed awkwardly and slipped the phone back into his pocket.  
“Thanks. Henry Le Vesconte.”  
They shook hands.  
“George Hodgson, I used to play band. We had history together.”  
“Oh!”

George Hodgson, of course! Now that Henry was standing across from the man there was no mistaking the wispy blond hair and the very british enounciation.  
“I almost didn’t recognize you!”  
Hodgson laughed and tugged on the lapel of his blazer. “Must be the receding hairline.”  
“Tosh,” said Henry and ordered his drink.  
Hodgson was already holding a glass of something, napkin in his other hand.  
It was anybody’s guess why he had come up to the bar.

“You look quite sophisticated with your silver head, I must say, Henry. May I say Henry?”  
“Dundy, please. All my friends call me Dundy.”  
Henry took a sip of his brandy and winked at Hodgson.  
“Well, then please, call me George. It’s what my friends call me, on account of my parents having named me George.”  
Together they stepped away from the bar, much to the liking of the angry, short man, who grumbled something like “Fucking finally”.

“Dundy comes from my second name Dundas,” explained Henry, walking to the buffet, George trailing half a step after him.  
“Oh, from the Dundas family? Near Edinburgh? That is derived from the Gaelic words dùn, meaning ‘a fort’ and deas, meaning ‘south’, is it not? Family motto of ‘Essayez’, which, in my opinion, is so powerful!”  
Henry looked at George over his shoulder, watching as the man happily gesticulated his way through the little story. It made him smile.  
And that made Henry smile in turn.

“One should always strive to try! One who does not try simply cannot succeed.”  
“Is that from Star Wars?”  
George laughed, putting his drink down to pick a plate up, gently ladling pasta salad on it.  
“I believe this is the recipe of Edward’s eldest sister, which means it is simply divine, Dundy, and you should most assuredly try it. May I?”  
Henry dutifully held up a plate and George gave him a huge spoonful of the pasta salad.  
“Oh, with peas!”  
“Of course with peas.”  
“Neato, I love peas.”  
George beamed at him, as if it were his personal achievement that there were peas in the salad.

The man was adorable.  
With his little collar and his tie-pin, shaped like the keyboard of a piano. His little shoes and the impeccable creases on his dark trousers.  
George added some chicken wings to his and Henry’s plates and they took seats close by the buffet.  
Henry was already eyeing the desserts on the far left of the buffet.

“You said you did band in school, yes?”  
“Yes! From sixth grade up until graduation! My parents wanted me to continue with the youth orchestra, but I much preferred the camraderie of the band. It helped me connect to people in the school and that’s always good, I read, when children have friends in their school and peer group.”  
Henry smiled around a fork of pasta salad and nodded, trying to remember exactly if he’d ever talked to George before today.  
Maybe a quick hello, or asking for the time, but they hadn’t run in the same circles at all.  
The only band kid Henry knew was Gore, and that more because of the rowing and through Jas.  
“Do you play an instrument? Or sing perhaps?”  
“Oh no. The only instrument I play is the horn of my car.”  
Henry felt he had to buy George dinner, just for the fact that he laughed at Henry’s jokes.

“Which one is yours then, outside?”  
“Jas and me took a cab. We didn’t want to have to keep sober here.”  
“Quite the good thought! John and I still have to check in later, we missed our exit and couldn’t check in beforehand. We didn’t want to be too late in coming here, but I fear we missed the opening speech.”  
“There wasn’t one.”  
“No speech?” George made a disappointed/sad face that Henry had only ever before seen on cartoon characters and it made it impossible not to smile.  
Okay, maybe it was a grin.  
“I take it you enjoy a good speech, George?”

“I still fondly remember John Franklin’s speeches at the start and end of every schoolyear. The man could hold the most amazing speeches.”  
Henry nodded, chin resting on his fist, turning his glass on the cheap paper tablecloth.  
“Just, us students all sitting there, reverently listening to our headmaster give us the advice that would help us through yet another year of our young lives.”  
George sighed, eyes fixed on a far away memory and Henry sipped his drink, grinning smarmily.  
“I always slept through the ones in the morning.”  
“No!” George laughed and tossed his napkin at Henry. It was as ballistic as a limp snap bracelet and simply fluttered to the floor. “How dare you? I transcribed all his speeches when I was fifteen.”  
Henry snorted into his brandy and speared a noodle, pointing it at George.  
“Depressed, insomnic or in love? What compelled you do that?”

“I’m autistic,” said George, dabbing his mouth with his handkerchief. “Speeches were a special interest.”  
“Couldn’t you have picked good speeches? Franklin kept dropping in all that Jesus-stuff, as if we were in the 19th century.”  
“I went to a catholic mass once, as a boy, and that was, I tell you, the one perfect moment in a whole imperfect life. So I can understand the comfort people take in religion.”  
Henry bit his tongue to not ask George if he felt that way because he’d never had good sex.  
Maybe a tad inappropriate.

“Take my good friend John, for example,” George continued, “He’s quite religious. He takes great comfort in knowing he’s not abandoned, never alone, held and loved by an omnipotent father-figure.”  
“Daddy-issues, I guess?”  
“Quite.”

George cut the meat off one chicken wing in the most sophisticated way Henry had ever seen.  
“So, which hotel are you staying in? Jas and me are in the Plaza Hotel.”  
“Aha! John and me too! Rooms 511 and 513, respectively. It’s quite comfortable, I’ve heard. The website was also very well made. I love the logo.”  
“I’m in 512. That should be directly across from you.”  
“My Lord! What a coincidence, Dundy!”  
George reached over the table and gave Henry’s forearm a little squeeze, winking at him.

“Maybe we can get a cab together, the four of us, later! It’s always more fun, when it’s more people, in my opinion. Since the longest time, I was in university, I am part of a gentlemen’s club, solely for the company.” George chuckled and finished his drink in one swallow. “Good times, I can tell you.”  
Henry lifted a brow and bit into a chicken wing. Soft and spicy and perfect on the bone.

While they ate George kept talking about his club, the origins of clubs, the history of cabs in Great Britain, horses, somehow, and then the domestication of wild horses in the eurasian plains.  
By the second half of the story about the origins of gentlemen’s clubs Henry was very sure that he would blow George under the table, if he only asked.  
“Wow,” he said, when George came to the conclusion of his informative horse-tale, stealing the last of Henry’s forgotten brandy.

“Oh, hush, Dundy! I got carried away there, sorry about that. That can’t have been very interesting to listen to.”  
George’s pretty mouth made a comical downward curve and Henry smiled, settling his chin more securely in his palm.  
“No, on the contrary. I hardly ever get the chance to learn new things – busy with work – so I’m happy to listen to you.”  
“Thank you,” said George quietly, fingers tapping against the edge of the table. It looked a bit like scales on a piano and Henry made a soft noise.  
“Don’t mention it, please.”  
George looked up again, eyes huge and a bit wet.

“Then let’s talk about something else: You mentioned work, Dundy, may I ask what you work as?”  
“Executive board of the family company. It’s mind numbing work, but it pays well and it’s secure.” He lifted his empty glass in a mocking toast and George tilted his head in sympathy.  
“I’m comfortable,” Henry added with a shrug, thinking of his empty, cold flat on the almost top floor of a London high rise and his uncomfortable designer couch.  
George shifted in his chair and licked his lips, Henry unable to look at anything else put the very pink tip of George’s tongue.  
“London?”  
Henry nodded with a sigh and another shrug.

“Me too, but only half the year. The other half I spent in the countryside or abroad. I work in film music and I find a lot of inspiration in travel and nature. There’s something about being immersed in another place that really inspires me,” George said, eyes shining and hands slicing the air animatedly, as he described his most recent trip to Marocco.  
Henry could almost feel the hot sun beating down on his face and the sweet peppermint tea scalding his tongue.  
“Sounds perfect,” he whispered, stretching his long legs under the table, until his feet bumped against George’s ankles.

George laughed, a warm, round sound, and Henry grinned wide and wild, feeling, for some reason, twenty again.  
Like when he stood atop mountains with Jas, hair already grey, but mind free and fresh and ready for the rest of his life.  
It had felt good.  
He didn’t want to stop feeling like this again.  
George looked at him and smiled and Henry rubbed the inside of his foot along George’s leg.  
“I’m glad you came late.”

George laughed, a bit nervous and stood, lifting his empty glass.  
“I’m going to get something to drink, do you want something too, Dundy?”  
“Whiskey, please. On ice.”  
Henry watched George walk up to the bar, lean over it to talk to Diggle and his trousers pulled deliciously taut over his bum.  
Henry licked his lips.

“Well, well, Dundy. How are you liking his French?”  
“Oh, Jas, are you drunk and missing your boyfriend?”  
Jas sighed theatrically and dropped into Henry’s lap. “Yes, yes I am. I wish he would have come.”  
“And sit here with a bunch of kids? Feeling old?” Henry grinned and gently patted Jas’ artfully mussed hair.  
“He’s not old!”  
“Tell him that and not me,” said Henry, thinking fondly of his last girlfriend, Marianne. Mother of two grown kids and sweeter than sugar.  
“Are you thinking of your MILF, Dundy, with a delightfully british man lined up for the taking?”  
“No,” lied Henry and looked up to the bar again.

Where George was talking to some guy in a hoodie with the most outdated haircut Henry had seen today. He was holding two drinks that were dangerously close to spilling with the way George was gesticulating.  
“Look at him,” said Jas, stroking Henry’s cheek. “He’s delightful. Very awkward. Like a little bird.”  
“Jesus, Jas, you’re wasted. Should I call you a cab, babe?”  
Jas shook his head, kissing Henry on the cheek wetly.  
“Nah, I’m good. Just gotta have some water. Mind if I join for a bit? Eye your man a bit.”  
Henry chuckled and helped Jas pull up a chair, watched his best friend sip water straight from the bottle in the middle of the table.

“Oh, hello, James!” crowed George happily, sitting down after handing Henry his whiskey with a smile.  
“Don’t mind me, George, please, I’m just taking a break from being the center of attention.”  
George laughed and brushed a fluffy strand of hair out of his flushed face.  
“Make sure you don’t do it too long, we wouldn’t want you to starve.”  
“Hah! I’m not the only one who thinks you’re a vampire, Jas! I keep telling him, he sucks people’s energy, that’s why he has to be the one talking at all times.”  
George laughed, knocking his foot against Henry’s under the table.  
Jas pouted into his water bottle and fumbled his phone from the inner pocket of his blazer, clumsily trying to unlock the screen.

Henry fished it out of Jas’ loose grasp and unlocked it for him without looking. Jas blew him a kiss absentmindedly, already reading some message or other when he had it back.  
George looked at Henry over the rim of his glass and smiled, a soft private thing that made Henry feel very warm under his collar.  
He really was more than ready to drop to his knees and suck George into oblivion.

“John is completely drunk, crying on Edward’s shoulder in the corner, the poor sod.”  
“John who you came with? Irving, right?”  
“The very same. One of my best friends! We shared a room at uni and I can tell you those were a few fun years.”  
“Jas and I bunked until he moved in with his boyfriend, actually. Three years ago now.”  
Jas made a noise in acknowledgement and Henry rubbed his knee to keep him from barging into the conversation.  
For once Jas took the fucking hint.  
“You must get lonely then, Dundy. Living together that long and now all alone? I’d get lonely, I must confess.”  
Henry shrugged and took a sip of his drink. Soft and supple, like he thought George’s mouth must be.  
“It’s fine, I’m out a lot. You live alone too, right?”

“I have two dogs,” George chuckled and pulled his phone out. The case showed a picture of a concert piano stood in a room full of roses.  
Henry grinned and waited dutifully until George turned around his phone, info-dumping about dog breeds.  
“Corgies! Cute. Like the Queen,” said Henry pointing at the two dogs on the screen, their little golden heads tilted to the side.  
“Oh, I’m distantly related to her. And the dogs are from the same litter as hers.”  
George grinned, putting his phone down, while Henry could do little more but sit and blink and stare.

“Anyway,” said George, “I’m not lonely with them around. And I have a lot of musicians that come by because of work, so really, I have more of an open door policy in my houses.”  
“Hold up, hold up. You’re related to the Queen?”  
George laughed, toasting Henry and taking a long swallow from his drink. Jas looked up blearily from his phone, one brow lifted and lipgloss completely washed away from his water.  
“Who is related to the Queen?”  
“George, apparently.”  
“George?”  
Jas turned to him and George bowed in his chair, with all the flair of a concert pianist.  
Henry had the urge to applaude and only barely quelled it.

“Distantly, my dear fellows, very distantly, but it is a little fun fact. Let me show you the family tree.”  
He took his phone up again and, in a matter of seconds, had a fully illustrated family tree open for them and Henry – to his own surprise – sat gladly through one and a half hours of George’s obscure family history.  
At one point in the 18th century of the family tree they lost Jas to his craving for tiramisu and Henry mourned the fact that he still hadn’t had dessert, but his investment in the tragic romances here was bigger.

George cleared his throat at the end of his story, pointing at the little digital portrait of his own face on the family tree.  
“And that’s how I’m related to the Queen.”  
“Honestly, George, where were you all my life?”  
“You know, same school as you and then university. Not that I think we would have been friends in school, we ran with very different crowds.”  
“Yes,” sighed Henry, nostalgic for school once more.  
It was why he hated reunions as much as he loved them: They made him nostalgic.

“Dessert? I have a little appetite for something sweet,” said George, voice thick and warm and making Henry curl his toes against the need to kiss the man.  
“I’m always hungry for sweets.”  
“Un bouche douce, I see, I see,” murmured George and together they walked the short distance to the dessert buffet.  
“I’ll have you know, George, that my grandmother used to call me a sweet-eater on the regular. I loved that woman. French, small and fierce as a cannonball.”  
“She spoke French with you?”  
“Solely, oui. Where did you learn French? You speak it really well, for an Englishman.”

George laughed, picking up a slice of cake for his plate. “My Nanny was French and then in school. I lived in France for a year after finishing my degree and I work a lot with a French/German agency for film music.”  
Henry whistled softly and ladled custard into a bowl, piling cakes and muffins and biscuits on an additional plate.  
“C’est bien, George! I spent a glorious month in Paris two years ago and got to know the bistros intimately.”  
“Ah, Paris,” sighed George, pronouncing it the French way, “I’ve sadly never been to visit. I’d love to go one day.”

After a short pause that Henry filled with eating a biscuit straight from the serving platter George added: “Preferably with someone who already visited before, so they can show me around.”  
Henry grinned his smarmy grin and gently elbowed George, winking suggestively.  
“See, I can show you the ropes around le petit Paris, mon cheri.”  
George laughed and warmly cupped Henry’s elbow in his hand, pressing quick kisses to his cheeks, like a true Parisian.  
Henry was left with a nose full of George’s perfume and the warm feeling of arousal pooling low in his belly.  
The man exuded a sickening amount of sex appeal.  
And by God, Henry was feeling it.

Conversation cycled from Paris, to food, to cooking, to the food industry, porcelain and the invention of chopsticks and then, somehow, to the south-east-asian independent film industry.  
George had the unfair talent of oratory in combination with the most gorgeous voice Henry had ever heard.  
The man could read him a fucking instruction manual for a toaster oven and Henry would get horny.  
He’d blow George while he talked about the history of toaster ovens.  
Henry opened another button on his already opened collar, fanning a bit of air over his sweaty chest.

“Are you hot?”, asked George, shrugging out of his blazer, making Henry’s mouth run dry over the slim cut of his ivory dress shirt.  
“It’s warm in here,” Henry croaked through his dry mouth, nodding uselessly.  
“We could step out for a breath. Do you smoke?”  
“Only when I drink.”  
“A social smoker! Same as me! Let me hunt down someone we can bum some smokes off, I’ll meet you outside?”  
Henry collected himself enough for a grin and a nod, before standing on shaky legs and fleeing the warm room in a mostly dignified way.

Outside it was cool, the asphalt of the parking lot gleaming wet under the neon lights of the street lamps.  
Cigarette butts littered the ground around the overflowing ashtray, Henry counted the ones with red lipstick on the filter, until George nudged him from behind.  
He had his blazer on again, a half empty pack of cigarettes and a zippo lighter in his hand.  
“Hello there.”  
“Hello,” said Henry, putting his hand on George’s arm.  
“It’s nice out here. Not so loud.”  
“Yes.”

George pulled a cigarette from the pack and placed it gently between Henry’s lips.  
Henry’s heart throbbed somewhere in his throat and then dropped itself at George’s feet when George carefully lit the cigarette with the filigree zippo.  
“There you are,” he said warmly and Henry managed a wan smile around the cigarette.  
“Thank you, George.”  
“Don’t mention it,” said George with a lopsided smile, lighting his cigarette behind a cupped hand. The smoke curled around his face, drifting off to the right.  
Henry inhaled deeply, letting the heat, the bitterness of the nicotine wash over his tongue.  
It grounded him between his cold toes and the feeling of his heart prostrating itself at George’s feet.

“Whose smokes are we smoking?”  
“Bryant’s. He’s trying to quit for the third time and gladly offered the pack up.” George lifted the pack again, studying the label.  
Some cheap brand, but it tasted alright. Henry had definitely smoked worse tobacco.  
“And the lighter?” He was maybe, desperately trying to keep George talking and at the same time trying to keep the topic so mundane, that he didn’t really spring an inappropriate boner.  
“Oh, that’s mine!”  
George held it out to Henry on the flat of his palm and Henry took a second longer than neccessary to really look at the lighter, instead of the strong, lean, long fingers.  
It was a zippo, covered in intricate plant-patterns, looking vaguely vintage as a result, like the back of an old, expensive pocketwatch.  
“That’s pretty,” nodded Henry, tapping ash off his cigarette and touching the zippo with two fingers.

George closed his hand around the zippo and Henry’s fingers lightning quick and laughed, when Henry jumped.  
“Sorry, sorry, but you looked so focused, I just had to pull your leg!”  
Henry laughed along, heart hammering and fingers still held securely in George’s warm hand.  
He had no protocol for something like this.  
These things never happened to him like this.  
It was either always meaningless pick ups and grindr-flings or hunting down MILFs for weeks.  
No other man had ever flirted with him so casually, so physically and so fucking iresistibly.  
It made the shards of Henry’s broken porcelain bowl of a heart grind together.

“It’s alright,” Henry said breathlessly, still laughing.  
He pulled his arm back playfully, trying to wriggle his fingers out of George’s grasp and George stepped closer, pulling in the other direction.  
Two seconds later they had a full blown tug of war going, smokes tossed and faces split in boyish grins.  
Henry had a few inches on him, but George was unrelenting and stronger than he looked.  
Or maybe Henry was just too far gone already to fight him earnestly.  
After a few hours.  
God, this was novel.

Henry’s heel slipped on the wet ground, he stumbled and George pushed him up against the cold concrete wall of the building.  
There was no breath left in his lungs, and no air to breathe in.  
George was warm and firm against his chest and Henry looked down at him, hoping his cheeks were not as red as they felt.  
That his heart did not hammer so hard and so loud that George heard or felt it.  
George laughed against the side of Henry’s sweaty neck, his perfume clouding Henry’s mind completely.  
He leaned down, managing a deep inhale by George’s temple.

George turned his face, tilted up, mouth open to say something, maybe, and Henry kissed him.  
He put his free arm around George’s back and gently, carefully licked into his open mouth.  
Henry made a soft, almost inquisitive noise and adjusted the angle of his head slightly, to accomodate for Henry’s height.  
His mouth was warm, tasted of dessert and cigarettes and Henry could get drunk off of it.  
Intended to get drunk off of it.  
Finally George released his fingers, slipped the zippo into Henry’s blazer pocket and then put his long, nimble fingers on Henry’s waist, stroking his thumb over the bow of his ribs.  
Their tongues touched wetly and the shards of Henry’s heart stopped grinding against his soft insides.

Henry smiled into the kiss and put his free hand into George’s fine hair. It was silken between his fingers and he pulled George closer.  
Pressed him up against his own chest, leaning firmly into the wall in his back for support.  
“Dundy,” George whispered warmly as they took a break to breathe and Henry stroked George’s cheekbone, admiring the slant of it.  
“George,” murmured Henry and slid his hand from George’s back down to the waistline of his trousers.  
George grinned and tilted his hips, so that Henry’s hand came to rest over the curve of his arse.  
“So,” he said and the door next to them flew open.

“George! There you fucking are! I’ve been looking for you all over the place,” called Edward Little in his best outdoor voice. Which was really loud.  
Henry rolled his eyes and put both hands on George’s hips.  
George said “errr” and Edward Little stopped in his tracks when he saw that George wasn’t alone.  
“Oh.”  
“Hi Edward.”  
“Erm, Henry. George, can I talk to you?”  
More of an indoor voice now.

“What is it, Edward?”, asked George, the slightest bit of annoyance in his even voice and Henry subtly rubbed up against him.  
George looked at him out of the corner of his eye, ears red.  
“John threw up and started bawling his eyes out over some guy I don’t know and he wants you.”  
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” said George britishly and Henry hummed into his hair.  
“Dundy, my dear,” – _Oh_ , thought Henry with a little shiver – “Excuse me please, I have to go collect my stupid friend.”  
“Go ahead, I’ll have another smoke.”

George handed him the pack of cigarettes with a little kiss to the cheek, then he walked inside with Edward Little.  
Henry lit a cigarette with George’s pretty lighter and watched his hands shake for a long moment.  
He was half hard in his pants from a simple kiss. Like a teenager.  
Slowly a grin pulled his mouth wide and Henry scuffed his shoe over the ground, kicking at a cigarette butt.  
“George,” he said quietly and blew a plume of smoke into the night sky.  
The name was like gold on his tongue and he swallowed it.

After he had finished the cigarette the door opened again and Edward Little stepped through with his husband.  
Behind them shuffled John Irving, one arm over George’s shoulders. Jas brought up the rear, carrying an armful of coats, talking into his phone.  
“Henry,” greeted Thomas Little pleasantly and came to a stop next to him. “James is calling a cab for you four, John needs to go lie down. I hope that is alright for you?”  
Henry looked at George who looked back at him with a softly apologetic expression that was so heart-wrenching that Henry nodded.  
“Of course, of course. George, you still have your bags in the trunk, right?”

“Oh, yes! Good thinking. The keys are in my pocket.”  
Edward Little slipped his hand into George’s pocket with a grunt and came out empty handed.  
“Trousers, not jacket,” grunted George and started shifting John’s dead weight.  
John sniffled weakly.  
“Let me,” said Henry and nimbly plucked the car keys from George’s well-cut trousers.  
If he brushed his other hand over George’s arse in the same move, well, than that was between them.  
Together with Edward Little Henry pulled the overnight bags from the trunk of George’s car and took a little look into the inside.  
There was a little corgie dangling from the rearview.

“Do you know,” said Henry to Edward Little, who physically jumped at that, “That George’s dogs are from the same litter as the Queen’s corgies?”  
“Oh fuck my life. I liked it better when you kissed him and didn’t repeat his stories, you know.”  
Henry laughed and gave the space between Edward Little’s shoulder blades a hearty slap.  
Edward Little stumbled the last step up to the others and flipped Henry the bird.  
Henry just winked at him and took his coat from Jas.  
“The cab should be here in ten minutes.”  
“Thanks, Jas,” said Henry against his temple and Jas leaned against him with a little drunken sigh.  
“Tired?”  
“Hhmm. It was a long day.”

Henry looked at George, who was helping John into his coat with the patience of a saint and smiled.  
Jas snaked his arm around Henry’s waist and leaned his head against his shoulder. His hair smelled like his shampoo still.  
“Found out where he’s staying?”  
“Same hotel as us. That’s why we’re sharing a cab, isn’t it?”  
“Oh, that’s the reason? I wasn’t paying attention when George talked, I was pre-occupied with John throwing up in a flower pot.”  
Henry laughed and gave the crown of Jas’ head a big, smacking kiss.  
“Are you going to kiss him?”  
“Already did.”  
“Gonna do it again?”  
“Well, I hope so.”  
Jas giggled into Henry’s collar and then put his cold nose against Henry’s neck.  
“It’s good to see you smile, you’ve been so sad lately, Dundas.”  
“Oh, Jas,” choked Henry through his tight throat and hugged Jas firmly against his side.

The cab pulled up to them and Edward and Thomas stepped back into the doorway, bidding them goodbye, asking George to keep them updated about John.  
They looked terribly concerned.  
The cab driver took the bags and put them in the trunk, George helping John into the back of the car in the meantime. Jas gracefully took the passenger seat and Henry folded his long legs into the back with a sigh.  
John sat by the far window, sucking the cool night air in through his stuffed nose.  
George next to him held his hand and talked to him softly, voice too quiet for Henry to understand what he was saying, but the cadence was calming enough.  
Jas talked to the driver up front, his usual charming self and Henry closed his eyes and simply waited until they stopped in front of the Plaza Hotel.  
Where Jas payed the driver and took the bags from him.

Henry took John from George, who still had to pick up the keys for their rooms.  
The night concierge was a godsent, though.  
Handsome and polite, with a strong nose and a kind smile, he sorted George out in a matter of minutes and they all piled into the elevator.  
John cried softly into Henry’s shoulder, Henry stroking the nape of his neck with his thumb.  
“I hate him,” mumbled John and Henry hushed him, nodding against the top of John’s head.  
“He’s a real dick, treating you like that, darling.”  
John sniffled and quietly said “Yeah”, before crying a bit harder.

George made a little cooing sound and the doors of the elevator opened to the fifth floor.  
Jas poked his head into the hallway and looked left and right, before stepping out and slowly ambling down to their rooms.  
Henry followed with John and George shouldered the bags.  
The three of them helped John get settled and he promised to call one of them if he felt sick again.  
Henry sighed and prayed to the gay goddess of good flings that John called neither him nor George.  
Jas bid them all goodnight, kissed Henry’s cheek and slipped into his room, phone in hand.

That left only Henry and George standing in the hallway, looking at each other.  
“I’ll let you get settled,” said Henry and George smiled at him, taking Henry’s hand.  
“Can I come see you, after I get settled?”  
“Just knock, I’ll be up.”  
Henry smirked and George winked, unlocking his room and closing the door behind himself.  
“Fuck,” whispered Henry with feeling and dashed into his room for a quick wash.

He brushed his teeth in the shower, careful to keep his hair dry. He had no time to blow-dry and style it again, so the days hairstyle would have to be sufficient.  
With a grimace he decided to be thourough in washing himself.  
Better to be prepared as much as he could be, with this short notice.

Henry had just pulled on his satin pyjama pants and his travel bath robe, when George knocked at the door.  
With a grin he opened the door and George whistled surprised, immediately touching Henry’s naked chest.  
His hand was warm and dry and he pulled it away quickly.  
“Sorry about that!”  
“Nonsense, come in.” Henry stepped aside and let George pass him gladly.

George had left his tie and blazer in his own room, swapped his dress shoes for a pair of slippers.  
His sleeves were rolled up and Henry took his sweet time to appraise George’s forearms. He came up with a positive number.  
“Nice watch,” he said and George sat down on the end of the bed with a smile.  
“Why, thank you, Mr Le Vesconte.”  
“Drink?”  
“No, thank you.”  
Henry crossed from the door to the bed and slowly reached for George.

He cupped George’s cheek and bent at the waist, kissing him softly and deeply.  
George leaned up into the kiss, one hand on the side of Henry’s thigh, rubbing the satin up against Henry’s leg.  
With a sigh Henry sank to his knees on the soft hotel rug, George opening his legs to make a space for him.  
“You know,” Henry said against George’s lips, “I wanted to blow you since we sat down to eat.”  
George shivered, laughing gently, hands brushing Henry’s hair behind his ears.  
“Thank you, my dear. That’s very sweet of you. Do you want to blow me now?”  
Henry sat back on his haunches and shrugged out of his robe.

“Oh, you bet I want to. Let me get at that zipper, Mr Hodgson, and I will make you lose your mind.”  
George laughed, leaning back a bit to open his belt and zipper, pushing his trousers down his thighs. Henry pulled them down the rest of the way, smoothing his hands up George’s lean legs, until he touched the hem of his trunks.  
“Ready?”  
George laughed and lifted his hips.  
Henry pulled with the magician-flourish he had learned at age nine, trying to become a stage magician.  
He could still make coins vanish and pull a tablecloth out from under a set table.  
Right now, it mostly served to make George laugh.  
And it did.

“Are you a little wizard, Dundy?”  
Henry snorted, dropping his forehead to George’s knee.  
“Ye’re a wizard, Dundy,” he managed between bouts of laughter.  
“Is that from Harry Potter?”  
Henry nodded, still chuckling against George’s warm skin.  
He smelled nice.

“You smell nice.”  
“Thank you. You too. Did you take a shower?”  
“Quick rinse,” smarmed Henry with a one-shouldered shrug.  
“Sweet of you, my dear.”  
George kissed his cheek and lips, stroked the stubble at Henry’s chin and kissed that too.  
“I didn’t have time to shave. I hope you don’t mind?”  
“I’ll manage, Dundy dear. Feel free to start whenever you’re ready.”

Henry laughed, a tad nervously this time, because George kept petting his hair, and well.  
No one had done that for him since his first time giving head.  
He shifted forward a bit, George readily opening his legs.  
His cock was not yet stiff, resting soft between George’s thighs. He was uncut, the foreskin loose.  
Henry gently lifted the cock with his hand and pressed the tip against his closed lips, carefully sucking it inside while pushing the foreskin back.  
George said: “Oh, that’s nice”, and stroked Henry’s hair again.

Henry performed his little signature tongue flick against the slit of George’s cock and swallowed him down a bit more.  
He tasted salty, but not unpleasantly so.  
Slowly the cock on Henry’s tongue thickened, filling with blood.  
He kissed down the length, rubbing George’s cock against his cheek, sucking gently on his balls.  
George lifted his hips into the suction, dropping back on the soft bed, so he lay splayed out like a price.  
“Dundy,” he moaned, voice thick and dripping down Henry’s spine like golden honey.  
Henry lifted his head out of George’s lap, gently jacking his cock as he crawled up on the bed.  
George fumbled the buttons of his dress shirt, shrugging out of it sluggishly.

“Talk to me, George,” asked Dundy quietly against the crook of his neck, sucking a kiss into the skin there.  
“Anything specific, my dear?”  
“No, no, I just want to hear your voice. It’s a very nice voice.”  
Henry kissed George, gently rubbing George’s foreskin over the head of his cock.  
“Well, well, Dundy. Should I talk about how good it feels when you touch me? When you take me into your mouth? Or should I tell you about the history of film music? Orchestras or operas? The Iliad?”  
Henry laughed and kissed down from George’s shoulder to his hip.  
“I really don’t care. You could read me the phone book and I’d love it.”

George inhaled sharply as Henry sucked his stiff cock down again, rolling his balls gently in the palm of his hand.  
Firmly George grabbed Henry’s arse through the pyjama pants, humming loudly.  
“What to talk about? Oh! I know!”  
George cleared his throat and Henry wriggled his arse eagerly into George’s palm, tongueing his slit wetly.  
“Satin, my dear, I bet you know nothing about.”

Henry hummed, sucking down George as far as he could; blond pubes tickled his nose and George said something about thread count.  
It went completely over Henry’s head, but boy, that voice touched him deeply.  
It was like being dipped in a pot of honey, almost sickly sweet, but so decadent and rich that Henry just had to love it.  
Bathing in gold.

He shuddered, George’s cock heavy and thick on his tongue now, his voice a bit more breathy, a tad rougher than when they had started.  
Henry pulled off of George’s cock, licked his lips and looked up at him, finding George already looking back.  
He had tugged a pillow down the bed to give himself a better angle to stare at Henry.  
“Tired of satin already?”  
“No, just wanted to see your handsome face for a moment.”  
George smiled, cheeks flushed, and beckoned Henry up for a kiss.  
Henry tossed his hair out of his eyes, licked a drop of precum from George’s cock and then flopped around, dropping his head on the pillow next to George.  
“Hello,” he said, and George kissed him.  
Murmured “bitter” into Henry’s mouth and then lapped his own taste from Henry’s tongue.  
Henry felt George’s cock press hard and hot against the jut of his hip, and his own cock twitched with a certain level of intrigue.  
His satin pants were wet already, sticking to the glans.

“Are you a bit wet, Henry? Would you be more comfortable without your pants?”, asked George the thin patch of skin under Henry’s ear, palming his arse again.  
Henry laughed, gooseflesh rising in the wake of George’s voice.  
“Just say it, if you want to see me naked, George, no need to play coy.”  
He propped his head up in his palm, casual smile resting in the corner of his mouth, free hand idly stroking George’s side.  
George smiled back and rolled on his side, so that they faced each other, feet dangling off the end of the bed.  
“I’d very much like to see you naked, Dundy, my dear,” said George, quite conversationally.  
“Well, you didn’t joke about your club did you? Made you quite sure in a wide manner of dealings.”  
Henry grinned as George laughed, pulling him in for another kiss.

“I’m still a member,” he whispered, putting his hand down the back of Henry’s pants. “I could take you along, some time.”  
George’s slender hand curled around one of Henry’s buttocks, the fingertips just so dipping into his cleft and he rutted up against George’s thigh.  
“Well, well, well. Why not? Ring me when you’re in London next and have the time, why don’t you?”  
“Sure,” said George with a nod and pulled down the elastic of Henry’s pants, until it snapped into place just beneath his arse.  
Then he took both hands to Henry’s exposed arse, gently pulling the cheeks apart, as he described his favourite route from his London flat down to his club, the route he would take together with Henry.  
Henry mouthed at George’s throat, feeling the vibrations of his voice against his tongue.

Sweat rolled down his spine and he grinned against the pale stubble at George’s chin, when George swiped a finger through the gathering moist and called Henry wet again.  
“Would you mind if I gave your bum a little swat, Dundy,” he asked next, kneading Henry’s arse gently.  
“Oh-ho. Do you like being a bit naughty, George?”  
“You’ve a lovely bottom, my dear and I’d love to hear what sound it makes when I swat it.”  
“Why, do you think I would like it?”

George grinned and resettled his head on the pillow, clearing his throat.  
“Didn’t you ever entertain the thought of how it would be to go a Victorian boy’s school?”  
“Boarding school, you mean? I almost went, but my mother was against it, in the end. I did ponder it a few times.”  
“Do you know that physical punishment amongst the student body is still a problem at boarding schools? The older students often humiliate the younger ones, using punishment methods from the 19th century.”  
“Flogging, you mean?”  
“Flagellation, yes, Dundy, very smart.”  
Henry laughed and tilted his arse more into George’s hands again.  
“You can give it a swat, if you want to.”

George’s pale eyes sparked for a moment, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, mouth wide in a grin.  
He lifted one hand away from kneading Henry’s arse, sliding his other palm to gently cradle the side of Henry’s hip  
“Prepare,” he said.  
Henry inhaled, heart beating double time in his chest, cock twitching against taut satin.  
“Many men in the 19th century,” George lectured, moving his hand from Henry’s shoulder to his elbow and back, before lifting it away, arm hovering somewhere over Henry’s flank.  
He shuddered.

“Many men had been flogged at school, made a public spectacle of, as most punishments could be attended by all boys. For some the humiliation” – here he brought his hand down on Henry’s arse loudly, the sting minimal, but Henry gasped against George’s shoulder, whole body rocking with the shock – “became pleasure. Became inherently erotic.”

George swatted Henry again, hitting the same spot again, the sting pronounced now.  
Henry’s heart hammered, his cock leaking precum steadily now.

“They started yearning for it, seeking it out as grown men. Almost half of Victorian pornography” – A third swat, gentle and ending in George simply cradling Henry’s smarting arse, landed – “Has at least an element of flagellation.”  
Henry exhaled sharply, inhaling just as loudly, hands tight and shaking on George’s upper arms.  
“Was that good for you, my dear?”  
He shuddered and nodded, finding George’s gaze with a wide smile.  
“Very. Also quite informative. Good for you?”

George laughed and kissed Henry’s sweaty temple before sitting up, stretching, giving his slightly flagging erection a little tug.  
“Splendid, Dundy. You want a drink of water, too?”  
“Won’t say no to that.”  
George rolled off the bed and walked over to the table, pouring two glasses of water for them. Henry watched him, taking his pyjama pants off at the same time.  
George drank his water where he stood, pouring another glass before turning back to Henry.  
Henry pressed his fingers tightly into the hot, spanked spot of his arse. It send a little thrill through him, cock dripping.

“There you go,” said George, handing him his glass of water. His gaze travelled leisurely from Henry’s adam’s apple up to his face, then down to his chest and cock.  
“Cheers.”  
They clinked their glasses and George sat down on the edge of the bed, resting one hand on Henry’s leg as they both drank.  
Henry’s thumb rubbed little circles into Henry’s skin and Henry reached over the mattress, rubbing the same cirlces into George’s thigh.  
“Dundy, my dear, I love how you touch me.”  
“You started, George.”  
“Did I now?” George looked down, watched his hand move with a detached interest for a moment. Then he shrugged and put his glass aside, sliding his hand up and between Henry’s legs.  
“That must mean you are simply irresistible, if I don’t even notice I am touching you.”

Henry laughed and handed his glass off to George again.  
It joined the other one on the nightstand.  
Then he opened his legs, knees splayed and feet planted. A pillow was already by his hip, ready to be administered in whatever fashion was needed.  
George closed his long fingered hand surely but gently around Henry’s cock and jacked it thouroughly.  
It made Henry’s eyes close of their own accord, mouth falling open and chest heaving with a deep breath.  
His usual flings were quick and dirty, grips always a bit too tight, too slippery for Henry’s taste, and kisses always too biting.  
He liked it a bit slower, a bit gentler.

“Gay sex is always so competitive,” Henry said, smoothing his hand over George’s arm idly.  
“I think many gay men are trying to ceaselessly prove themselves to someone or prove something to themselves. It surely plays a role that homosexuality is still seen as something lesser or other than heterosexuality, I think, so many men that engage in homosexual activities think they have to be a certain way, do things a certain way to be accepted.”  
George rested his thumb against the underside of Henry’s cockhead for as long as it took the bead of precum to roll down to his finger.  
Then he lifted his hand away and sucked it off his thumb.  
Henry groaned, leaking more precum.

“That the way most homosexual men conduct themselves in the bedroom is deeply tainted by how heterosexual people believe they should conduct themselves is truly tragic. Somehow, somewhere in the history of love, we have lost the gentleness inherent to being intimate with each other.”  
“Fuck, that’s beautiful. Kiss me?”  
George laughed and obliged Henry with a sloppy, slow kiss.

They looked at each other for a long moment, George stroking one of Henry’s brows, Henry thumbing at one of George’s nipples. More for the heartbeat he could feel against his palm than the stiff nipple, but he’d never admit that.  
“I like doing this with you.”  
“Me too. I had a bit of a dry spell recently, all the guys messaging me on grindr were so weird about my hair, you know.”  
George pushed his hand into Henry’s thick hair, gently scratching at his scalp.  
“Why? It’s sexy, but not in any special way. It’s sexy, because it is yours, Dundy. I like that you keep it natural, wear it with pride, so to say, but it’s not something I usually find exceptionally attractive in a man.”  
Henry shivered, grinning a bit. George had a way with words that made Henry very glad that he also had the most gorgeous voice.

“Come to think of it,” he added, throwing a leg over Henry’s thighs and straddling him, “There are no physical traits I find attractive on their own. It’s always a Gesamtkunstwerk that I like.”  
“Has anyone ever told you how fucking sexy you are, George Hodgson?”  
George laughed and toyed with Henry’s splayed fingers on his thighs. His skin was pale, milky, and soft.  
“Not usually, no. Most people don’t even like it when I talk much during sex.”  
“Their loss, your voice is such a turn-on for me.”  
Henry bucked against George, rubbing his cock up against the back of George’s thigh with a moan.

“I noticed that, yes.” George leaned forward, hands left and right of Henry’s face.  
Slowly he lowered his head, gaze locked with Henry’s, until he spoke directly against his cheek.  
“Especially, Dundy, dear, when I come close to you. You shiver so delightfully, so sweet and earnest. I bet no one has ever seen you like this before.”  
Henry laughed breathlessly, stomach clenching through a delicious thickening of his arousal, skin jumping against George’s featherlight touches.  
“Hey, George?”  
“Something I can do for you, Dundy?”  
“How do you feel about anal sex?”  
“Usually highly positive. Why do you ask?”  
“Want to fuck me?”

George sat back a bit, studying Henry for a long moment.  
Henry would deny squirming if someone asked, but he definitely squirmed under the scrutiny.  
“Is it something you do regularly?”  
“Not with any real regularity, but I got some toys at home that get their fair use. I’m not a cherry, love.”  
“Just checking, I don’t want to make you feel like it’s something you need to do when you’re uncomfortable with it.”  
“I asked you, George.”  
“Still. I shall gladly fuck you, Dundy, but I wouldn’t be against doing it the other way around either.”  
“Hhmm, maybe another time, okay? I really want to come on your cock.”

George’s eyes closed, head rolling back on his neck, fingers tapping Henry’s chest like a piano’s keyboard.  
“That sounds so good, Henry. Please tell me you actually have lube and condoms, because I will be so sad if this does not come to pass now.”  
“Do I have lube and condoms,” scoffed Henry, laughing softly. “Let me get at my valise and then I can get the goods.”  
George rolled over, releasing Henry’s legs from his gentle trap and Henry cupped his cock in his palm, not really a fan of it bobbing freely as he walked over to his valise on the sideboard.  
Last Christmas Jas had gifted him a tasteful little goodie-bag, handsewn, a wide array of dicks printed on the baby blue cotton.  
Henry had laughed himself silly, drunk on eggnog, until he had cried. Jas had held him, his boyfriend retreating to the kitchen, uncomfortable with emotional displays.

George laughed too, when Henry lifted the baggie, shaking it enticingly.  
“Oh, he came prepared!”  
“A gentleman is always prepared.”  
Henry opened the zipper and upended the baggie over the mattress. Colourful foil packets and two small tubes of lube tumbled merrily into the sheets. And a little handy vibrator that promptly bounced off the mattress. He’d have to look for it tomorrow.

“I’ve got strawberry flavoured lube and plain, both safe for condoms. Oh! Latex-allergy?”  
“Not that I know off it.”  
“Alright, then we can use all the condoms I have. I have coloured ones with flavour and without flavour, some with ribs and little nubbies, if you like that.”  
“Do you like that?”  
“Sometimes it’s nice to spice things up a bit, but I think I’m fine with plain, if you are. What size do you wear?” Henry eyed George’s cock, trying to gauge the size of it.  
“Medium, I think? Maybe a small, depends on the company.”

Awe-struck Henry blinked twice, shaking his head a bit. “You might just be the first guy I get naughty with that didn’t insist on needing the large condoms.”  
“Oh there’s no sense in lying about something like that. It’s just embarrassing if the condom doesn’t fit in the end.”  
“True, true.”  
Henry rummaged through the condoms, picking one out and handing it to George, who thanked him politely.  
“Plain lube is okay?”  
“Very much so, Dundy, thanks. Do you want to stretch yourself, or do you want me to do it?”  
“I’ll do it myself, don’t worry, but I’d like you to hold my cock.”  
“Sure, I can do that.”

Together they put the condoms and strawberry lube back into the baggie and dropped it off the bed.  
Henry settled on his knees, one hand behind himself, between his ankles, to keep his balance. George squirted lube over Henry’s fingers and Henry warmed it up a bit while George already rolled the condom over his cock.  
“Stupid, really, that I let you blow me without a condom, sorry about that. My last test was negative, though.”  
“Mine too, but I’ll get one at home, just to be safe.”  
“Wise choice, my dear, very good. Ready when you are.”

George’s hand, slightly sticky from the bit of lube on the condom, settled gently around Henry’s cock and Henry reached behind himself and pushed the first finger into his body.  
It was a bit tight, his last foray more than a fortnight ago now and he wasn’t twenty anymore.  
But George expertly twisted his wrist, taking Henry far, far away from the slight discomfort.  
“Oh, can I ask you a question, Dundy?”  
Henry grunted an affirmative, carefully sticking a second finger up his arse, making sure to rub plenty of lube into his rim.

“In school we all, well many of us, thought you and James Fitzjames were dating and I just wanted to ask if you ever did date.”  
“No, not really. We fooled ah!” Henry had to stop to catch his breath, George’s thumbnail rubbing very carefully over the little circumcision scar on the underside of Henry’s glans.  
“Go on.”  
Henry swallowed heavily and scissored his fingers, pressing back against his own hand.  
“We fooled around a bit when we were seventeen, but it never really went anywhere. We were both too, too young I guess.”  
George nodded, scratching the scar again, a bit firmer than before.  
Henry bit back a small shout and laughed instead, cock leaking something fierce now.

“Interesting, thank you. Your scar is very sensitive.”  
Now George rubbed his thumb from side to side, moving the slightly raised scar carefully with it.  
Henry almost lost his mind.  
“You’re a leaker, Dundy. Never would have guessed how wet you get.” George looked up from his ministrations and smiled, head tilted.  
He looked hot as fuck.  
“It’s quite sexy.”

“Fuck, George. I’m gonna cum, if you don’t lay off.”  
George laughed and turned his attentions back to the shaft, pressing and tugging softly, trailing kisses over Henry’s sweaty clavicle.  
He sucked teasingly just below the adam’s apple, making Henry gasp and jerk, fingers slipping deep into his body.  
His balls clenched and Henry shook, mind blanking for a moment.  
“Did you orgasm, Dundy?”  
“Think I did. Did I cum?”  
George lifted his hand and Henry blinked blearily, but no cum dripped from George’s pretty fingers.  
“Dry orgasm. Huh. Neat.”  
Henry checked for himself that he was still hard, cock jutting proud from its groomed patch of pubes. Short and neat, the glory trail mussed from George’s attentions, but everything was still in order.  
“Very well, let’s proceed.”

“Are you stretched enough? I wouldn’t want to tear something. Always so very awkward when an ambulance has to break up a sex party.”  
“You go to many sex parties then?”  
“I wouldn’t say many, but the club sometimes hosts some. I used to go more frequently, but with work and all I’m not always in the country when they happen.”  
“Sex parties at the club you want to take me to?”  
George winked and sat back to give Henry enough space to arrange himself on the bed.

“You’re tall,” he said when Henry was settled, stroking up and down his leg.  
“Took you long enough to notice.”  
“Pillow?”  
Henry lifted his hips and shoved a pillow under them, George holding on to his knees.  
“Very good, thanks. I first noticed how tall you were when we stood next to each other today, but I thought it was weird to comment on it, so I didn’t. But you are tall, Dundy.”  
“Not even half a foot taller than you, I reckon.”  
“Well, and I’m not a short man.”  
Henry shrugged, agreeing with a series of noises that Jas always called snuffles. The bastard.

George situated himself between Henry’s splayed legs and checked the fit of his condom twice before he nodded to himself and shuffled closer.  
“Alright, Dundy, ready?”  
“Yup, go ahead, I’m all ready,” Henry urged and lifted his hips a bit more, thighs flexing and toes curling.  
He was salivating over this, honestly.   
And then there was the gentle pressure, the warm press of George’s cock against his hole and Henry sighed.  
Relaxed completely against George.

“Oh, there you are,” murmured George and pressed in without any force.  
“Hello,” Henry said and clumsily rubbed his knee against George’s side, grinning smarmily, or at least trying to.  
“Hello,” George said indulgent, looping his arm through Henry’s bent leg and pulling him a bit closer. “Is this okay?”  
“Very. Please do go on.”  
“Alright, Dundy, dear, then I’ll slip in fully.”  
Henry licked his lips and reached out for George’s hands.  
They clasped palms, George leaning over Henry, pushing him into the pillows, much to Henry’s delight.  
Everything George did was done so gently, so carefully, that Henry was very sure there was no way he would feel unsafe with whatever George decided to do.

“Come on, George, you can pick up the pace,” whispered Henry against George’s sweaty chest, the fine dusting of blond hair there.  
George smiled and rolled his hips against Henry’s, pushing in deep.  
“Do you know, Dundy, how the modern condom as we are using it right now came into use?”  
Henry laughed, meeting George’s next thrust with a roll of his hips that made the very tip of George’s cock graze Henry’s prostate just so.  
He moaned loudly, hands flexing in George’s grasp.  
George pressed back, kissing the tip of Henry’s nose.  
“Pray tell, George, teach me.”  
Henry tilted his head back into the pillow and licked at George’s chin, sweat heavy on his tongue.

“Chronological or not?”  
Henry grunted through a hard thrust, thighs flexing left and right of George.  
“Babe, you could tell it to me alphabetically and I’d come.”  
George laughed and kissed Henry, working through three perfectly placed thrusts that made Henry’s cock jump against his belly.  
“One of my favourite facts is, that, during the Renaissance, condoms were effectively made from the same materials as very fine gloves.”

George’s voice was so round and clear, even as he fucked Henry into the pillows.  
No hitches, barely even pausing for breath, the same smooth inflection that he had had over dessert and drinks.  
“Or made from linen, chemically treated to not let any liquid through.”  
“Doesn’t sound very comfortable, if I may say.”  
Henry heard his own voice break, breath hitching on a laugh and George kissed around the shell of his ear, speaking directly against his skin again.

“Imagine using a condom made from tortoise shell or animal horn, like they did in Japan before Dutch traders introduced the leather condoms to them.”  
Henry cursed softly, nipples pebbling with no influence but George’s voice.  
“Hard like a dildo, I guess.”  
“They were glans-condoms.”  
“Kinky.”  
George laughed and sat back a bit, pulling Henry’s hands away from the pillows, not letting go of them.

“Hold on to yourself, Dundy, dear, I’ll take your hips in hand now.”  
“My, my,” murmured Henry, face hot and flushed, but he closed his fingers around his cock, pressing around the base to stave off his pending orgasm.  
Every time George said something he felt it creep up closer and closer, tingling up and down his spine, making his balls clench and clench and clench.

“In the 1840s the first condom-ads made it into British newspapers. Take into account here, Dundy”, said George and paused there, pulling almost fully out, making Henry gasp and clench around the sudden emptiness.  
“I’m listening, please, George,” cried Henry, fisting his cock as tightly as he dared, scrabbling at George’s shoulder with the other hand.  
George smiled and kissed the sweaty inside of Henry’s wrist. His thumbs pressed firmly into Henry’s hips.  
“Take into account then, that the first rubber condoms, a bit more than a decade later, were also advertised like that and the man’s penis had to be measured by a doctor. And then.”  
George thrust back in, driving as deep into Henry as he could, leaving him breathless and shaking, heart hammering.  
“Then they were manufactured for that man specifically. Glans-condoms again.”  
“Fuck,” muttered Henry, wiping his hand on the sheets.  
He was leaking a bit of cum now, not only precum.

“You’re gonna make me cum so hard, George.”  
“I think I’ve been making you cum for a few times now, dear.”  
George picked his pace back up again, rocking deeply and slowly into Henry, while telling him things about the history of condoms that went right over Henry’s pleasure-addled brain.  
The phrase ‘a little something for the weekend’ stuck and Henry whispered it back to George, making him laugh.  
“I’d love to have a little something for the weekend with you, Dundy.”

Henry sighed, and blindly reached up for George, pulling him down for a kiss. Miraculously it landed quite well.  
“Fuck,” he said against George’s lips, “I’d love that.”  
“Let’s go to Paris, Dundy.”

George rolled his hips, lifting Henry off the pillow, cool air rushing against his sweaty back.  
One of George’s arms came around his back and he was coaxed into George’s lap.  
His arms came around George’s sweat-wet neck and Dundy grinned, rutting his dripping cock against George’s belly.  
George was seated so deep inside of Henry now, that the head of his cock just naturally pressed against Henry’s prostate.  
Every breath, every miniscule movement sent sparks of pleasure up and down his spine.  
He wouldn’t hold out long now.

“Oh la la, Monsieur. Assez profond.”  
George closed his eyes and rested his cheek against Henry’s clavicle.  
His breath washed over Henry’s chest, his hands running up and down his back, cupping Henry’s arse.  
George swatted the already spanked cheek once more, the slap loud and stinging and Henry spasmed around the cock buried deep in his body.  
They both groaned.

“Do it again, please.”  
“My pleasure.”  
George slapped him again and Henry cried out. He tossed his head back, sweat flying, throat tight with another shout.  
“Tu es beau, Dundy, très beau.”

Henry’s orgasm swept over him like a warm bath. Drops of cum splattered his chest and throat, George’s lips and belly.  
Henry fell back into the pillows, loose limbed and twitching, his cock still leaking against his skin.  
George thrust into him again, his hands smearing the cum over Henry’s chest, and then he stilled, face so serene that Henry felt his heart throb, the shards grinding once again.  
“George,” he croaked and George shivered through his own orgasm, hips circling against Henry’s stinging arse.

Then George carefully pulled out and Henry closed his eyes, mourning the feeling of a hot cock up his arse for as long as it took for George to press up against his side and lick into Henry’s mouth.  
Henry turned, so they lay chest to chest and then lifted his leg over George’s side, one hand in his mussed, soft hair.  
“I really loved this.”  
George kissed the corner of Henry’s mouth, their stubble rasping, their mouths warm and wet against each other.  
“Me too,” answered George softly.  
Henry closed his eyes and drifted in and out of a little doze, comfortable as a bird in its nest.

George was talking quietly against his temple and Henry never wanted to fall asleep to anything else but the gentle cadence of it.  
Henry stretched against George, skin pulling under the dried cum and sweat and he winced.  
“Oh, Dundy, dear. Let’s get washed up, come on.” George urged him to sit up, taking him by the hand and leading him into the bathroom, Henry so tired to the bone that he could do nothing more but shuffle his feet.

George talked him through the wash up, hands and washcloth warm and soft on Henry’s skin, care dripping into the little cracks of Henry’s soul and knitting them together with gold.  
The grinding of his heart finally stopped, when George kissed his hairline.  
“Kintsugi,” he yawned and George stopped mid-sentence, dropping the washcloth into the sink.

“Kintsugi, Dundy?” The prompt was gentle, and Henry gladly obliged George’s gentleness.  
“It’s what you do for me. Fill my cracks with gold.”  
“Oh, my dear,” whispered George into Henry’s shoulder and hugged him long and hard.  
Henry lifted his arms drowsily, hugging him back.  
“You’re going to make me fall in love with you.”  
Henry laughed and kissed the top of George’s head.  
“Inevitable, I’ve been told.”  
“High self-esteem, very good.”  
“Can I visit your country house in summer?”  
“I’ll send you the address and when I’ll be there. Just drop by, you’re always welcome.”  
Henry smiled, the gold warming him from the inside out, his heart singing a chorus of ‘George, George, George’.

“Let’s go to bed, I’m falling asleep on my feet.”  
George smiled into the crook of Henry’s neck and then gently dragged him back into bed, the sheets soiled and sticky.  
“Eeww,” said Henry conversationally and George laughed.  
“We could go over to my room, the bed’s clean.”  
“Yeah, let’s.”  
Henry pulled his pyjama pants back on, picked his robe up from the floor and watched George just gather his things in his arms and step into his slippers.  
“Don’t forget your keycard,” he said, brandishing his own before walking into the hallway buck naked.

“Homme fou.”  
“Merci,” quipped George from his door and Henry followed him across the hallway, his phone and keycard in hand.  
They curled up under the sheets, George naked, Henry in his pants, hugging George to his chest with a big smile.  
George kissed the hollow of his throat and Henry fell asleep in a matter of seconds.

“Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte! There you are, my dear!”, called George from somewhere to Henry’s left and he turned to find George shirtless, barefoot, in loose linen pants stood on the overhead balcony.  
“Hello, George,” he said and pushed his sunglasses into his hair.  
Music spilled from the open windows of the country manor over the wild lawn. It had the distinct feeling of a hippie commune, without the disrepair Henry always expected from them.  
“Wait there, I’ll come down!”  
Henry nodded and put his suitcase down, turning to look at the driveway he’d just come up.

George, silent on his naked feet, hugged him from behind, standing a step higher than Henry to rest his cheek against the top of Henry’s head.  
“I’m glad you made it.”  
“Me too.”  
Henry reached into his pocket, reached for George’s left hand and kissed the palm of it, before placing the little chiffon-satchel into it.  
He twisted out of George’s embrace and kissed him on the lips.

“What’s this then?”, asked George and tapped the fingers of his free hand over Henry’s shoulder, as if he were the keyboard of a piano.  
“Remind me, how long ago did we meet?”  
“Counting our school years?”  
“No.”  
“Then it’s three now.”  
Henry nodded and pressed the satchel deeper into George’s palm.  
“Look at it.”  
“What is it?”  
“Look at it, George.”

George swallowed, shifted his feet on the warm stone of the front stairs and pulled the satchel open, letting the contents roll into his palm.  
Cuff-links. White porcelain.  
George lifted one up and Henry’s heart stuck in his throat.  
Veins of gold running through the porcelain.

“Kintsugi,” breathed George and Henry nodded, hands sweaty on George’s hipbones.  
George looked at the cuff-links for a very long time, eyes misty. Then he slipped them into the satchel, the satchel into his pocket.  
He took Henry’s face into both hands, thumbs rubbing into Henry’s beard.

“Let’s go to Paris for Christmas and get married.”  
Henry laughed, shock punching his heart straight through his ribs.  
“Hell yeah, why not? Just the two of us.”  
George grinned and kissed him.  
“Just the two of us,” he said against Henry’s lips and Henry shivered in delight.

**Author's Note:**

> if you came this far, tell me your favourite fun fact in the comment box below.


End file.
